Anecdotes and adages describe one day’s fishing

If you’re a regular reader of the tracks left here you know I’m not bashful about saying my birth cerficate is stamped with the state of Maine seal. Moreover, I don’t hesitate to say that, in the travels that have been my privilege and pleasure, I have yet to make camp in a place where I would rather live. But because that statement is sure to raise a few eyebrows, I offer three anecdotes – each of which occurred recently during one day’s fishing – that might explain why I never “pulled up stakes,” as they say.

Perhaps you know that a little rain to sweeten the river is all that’s needed to put an Atlantic salmon fisherman’s feet on the floor before daylight. Toss in a high tide at midnight and an increasing trap count in the fishway at the Veazie Dam and you have the reason I drove to the Penobscot’s Eddington Shore Pool during a recent predawn downpour.

Now, you’d think a man who had cast flies to Atlantic salmon for more than 40 years would be the exemplar of the adage, “Never be in a hurry to catch a salmon, because seldom is a salmon in a hurry to be caught.” But if you know the difference between a Blue Charm and a Green Highlander you know that’s not the case.

Haste makes waste

In the parking lot above the Eddington Shore – the lot slopes toward the river – I hurriedly flipped the truck’s gear shift into park position, so I thought. Actually, the shift lever dropped back into reverse, which held the truck in place while the engine idled. Leaving the headlights on, I got out of the cab, sorted out my gear and squirmed into chest-high waders.

In my eagerness to secure a place in the pool’s rotation – half a dozen or so anglers already had rods in the rack – I quickly switched off the lights and reached over the steering column to cut the engine, without realizing that I nudged the gear shift into neutral. In the next instant, and to my total surprise, the truck was rolling toward the river.

Talk about your coffee being curdled. Throwing my rod and tackle bag aside, I sprinted – wearing waders, if you please – and with a move that would be the envy of an Olympic gymnast, dove into the cab and arrested the runaway vehicle. After untangling myself from the steering wheel and four-wheel-drive shift lever, I expelled a long sigh of relief that steamed the windshield. Afterward, my fishing partners and I joked about our sport nearly being interrupted by a pickup truck plummeting over the bank and into the pool.

But the best of this anecdote was yet to come. Shortly thereafter, while swimming a No. 6 Green Highlander through the pool, I hooked, landed and released a salmon that was as fresh as the falling rain. What a way to start a day.

Rain by seven, clear by eleven

By noon the sun was casting short shadows and I was in a canoe casting flyrod poppers for smallmouth bass. Where a deep cove dented a gravelly shoreline, the deer-hair poppers agitated the spawning bass into one brawl after another. And nice bass they were, scrappy 2 1/2- and 3-pounders, with one about a strong 3 1/2.

There’s more to fishing, though, than catching fish: I was casting near a point of ledge when a deer – a doe, I reckoned by her trim figure – came out of the woods and began browsing on shoreline vegetation. On noticing me, she apruptly lifted her head, cocked her ears forward and stood taut, like a spring ready to uncoil. It was a picture to be painted: illumined by sunlight, the deer’s reddish-brown coat and verdant grasses glowed against the deeply shadowed woods beyond. The contrasting colors were dramatic.

Apparently the deer figured I was no cause for alarm. After feeding a while longer, it turned and walked casually into the woods. While I admired the silence of its departure, something struck the water behind me with a force that was startling. “Beaver,” I thought while turning to look. But to my surprise I saw an osprey lifting off the water with a yellow perch in its talons. The usually man-shy “fish hawk” made its explosive power dive so close by – about 40 feet away, give or take – that I was able to identify its prey. As I paddled around the point it occurred to me that I must not cut what is commonly referred to as “an imposing figure.”

Because I ascribe wholeheartedly to the adage, “Time and tide wait for no man,” on that evening’s ebbing tide I struck for a striped bass stronghold in the Penobscot’s estuary. Where a long finger of gravel tickled the river into laughter, the lightweight “schoolies” hit trolled lures and cast bucktail jigs with heavyweight punches.

What is so rare as a day in June?

A day of unforgettable fishing experiences: I was playing a striper when several fish, obviously spooked, broke water ahead of a sudden, surging wake that rocked the boat. Seconds later, a seal surfaced between me and the shore. I figured that was the end of my fishing but, surprisingly, it wasn’t. Even though the seal stayed in the vicinity, I continued catching and releasing stripers until the surrounding hills were silhouetted in the deepening dusk.

Running at a full gallop, the 10-horse outboard towed a wake toward the boat landing. Beneath a sliver of moon, a squadron of cormorants winged overhead like bombers on a night mission, while swallows, swooping and diving like fighter planes, attacked swarms of insects rising from the river. In admiring the beauty and serenity of the scene, it occurred to me that the day’s outstanding fishing and attendant anecdotes produced a limit of column material; not to mention sound reasons for never pulling up stakes.

Tom Hennessey’s column can be accessed on the BDN internet at: http://www.bangornews.com.